


The stream of everything that runs away

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Alpha Timeline Fluff [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Brothers, Family, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Prompt Fic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 17:31:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1949937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Dave's defense, he really, truly, honest to god, cross my heart, do I look like a liar to you, thought Jade and Rose had locked the super-fancy teleportalizicator console already -- set it to track baby alterna-Rose and her cat and nothing else -- and so it wouldn't matter if he twirled the dials and pushed the levers and sat on the big fuckoff green button.  Especially since he wasn't anywhere near the zappy ray bits.</p><p>Apparently accidental time travel is still a thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The stream of everything that runs away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/gifts).



> This story was written in response to a [kinkmeme prompt](http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/39716.html?thread=45771300#cmt45771300) from [Asuka Kureru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru): _alpha Dave somehow ends up 400 years into the future with kid!Dirk. (like, he doesn’t die and escapes into the medium and then falls out? condie throws him and rose in a bigger version of dirk’s headless microwave thing to keep them out of the way? what? i don’t even care which)_  
> 
> _i just have this image in my head of this classy motherfucker in button-up shirt and waistcoat, sitting on one of the lowest metal struts over the water with his feet bare and his suit pants legs rolled up as kid!Dirk shows him Very Srsly how to fish._
> 
> _awkwardness and sparring and tender feelings as they learn to know each other plz._
> 
> The title is a line from Robert Frost's poem "West-Running Brook," because I couldn't use an entire stanza as a title. The story has been edited slightly from the version on the kinkmeme.

In Dave's defense, he really, truly, honest to god, cross my heart, do I look like a liar to you, thought Jade and Rose had locked the super-fancy teleportalizicator console already -- set it to track baby alterna-Rose and her cat and nothing else -- and so it wouldn't matter if he twirled the dials and pushed the levers and sat on the big fuckoff green button.

Especially since he wasn't anywhere near the zappy ray bits.

Apparently the zappy ray bits were on a hinged and self-aiming robotic arm. He learned new things every day!

Aaaannnnnnnnd none of this was relevant at this exact moment in time and space and jesus shit, he should open his mouth and say something that at least vaguely pretended to being smooth and suave and in control of the situation, but he'd never expected to be in this time and place, and those orange-peel eyes staring at him out of a terribly serious little face were just...

"Hey," Dave said, lamely. He pulled one hand out of his jeans pocket and waved.

"Sup?" the kid -- Dirk -- said. He sounded like he was trying for cool. He missed by a bajillion miles.

Dave looked around the room, eyes skipping over the painfully tidy bed, the piles of sharp-edged metal scraps and wires, the orange soda bottles refilled with plain water, the utter lack of other buildings visible through the curtainless windows, the creeptastic ventriloquist dummy on the refrigerator. "Nice place you got," he said.

"Oh. It is?" Dirk looked around, like it had never occurred to him that his home could be evaluated on that criterion. He turned back to Dave, too-large katana vanishing from his left hand. "You set it up," he said, his voice still a little wavery. "I guess you're the expert."

It was strange seeing Dirk old enough to talk when Jake and Jane were still crawling around in diapers and burbling gibberish. Time travel was deeply, existentially weird that way. But still, Dirk couldn't be more than seven. Maybe eight, tops. Tiny, skinny kid, all ropy limbs and scarred hands and salt-stiff hair and skin burned to red-brown shadows instead of Dave's own mellow winter gold.

Eight years in solitary. Grown men went mad from less.

Dave pulled off his shades, crouched down with his arms spread, hands casually balanced on his knees. "I dunno, kid, interior design isn't my bag. I just stashed a bunch of shit and hoped it'd last. You're the one who made this crib a home."

"Cal helped," Dirk said, pointing toward the evil puppet thing on the stove.

Dave blinked. Hadn't it just been on the fridge? And he was damn sure he hadn't and wouldn't add anything like _that_ to the survivalist supply list.

Maybe it crashed down with the meteors, like Jake's guns and Jane's hat. Or maybe Rose was still doing her best to punk him four hundred years in the goddamn future. Whatever. Not the point.

"Cool, glad to hear you got a friend," he said. "Speaking of which, you're in touch with Roxy, right?" Probably not Jane and Jake -- Jade still hadn't figured out how to twist the mismatched interuniversal timeframes to make that happen -- but the last two copies of Pesterchum in this time ought to communicate smooth as a lubed-up porn dick into a waiting pussy... and he should watch those metaphors, shouldn't he, tender impressionable young minds and all that shit.

Dirk nodded. "Yeah. We talk a lot. She's loud. But nice?"

"Cool," Dave said again.

Dirk was still standing all the way across the room, back against the kitchen cupboards. It was weird. Dave didn't think he was the kind of person kids flocked to, but when he was Dirk's age, he remembered wanting a real family so bad he used to lie awake at night, surrounded by the latest knockoff borrowed temporary caretakers, and think he might implode from all the hollow-empty need in his chest. He would have jumped into Jade or John's arms without a second thought if he'd met them back then. But Dirk just stood there like an unstrung puppet waiting for a hand and a cue to set him in motion.

Baby monkeys raised without touch went funny. Went wrong. Never quite got the hang of the social thing. Never learned how to be _real_.

Dirk had video files and a hardwired chat link to Roxy and even a creep-ass puppet for something soft to cuddle, but really, was it a surprise he'd never learned how to hug?

Dave stood from his crouch and walked across the room, slow and steady, giving Dirk all the time in the world to dodge or tell him to stop. Then he crouched down again, rested one hand feather-light on his little bro's shoulder. Dirk's body heat radiated up through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. His bones felt like sharp-edged glass, nothing to gentle them, keep them from rubbing the inside of his skin raw.

"Hey. Kiddo. You did good. You did amazing. I never thought I'd get a chance to see you, but I am _so_ fucking proud."

Dirk's eyes went all screwed-up-tight miserable, even though the rest of his face never changed. "You're not going to stay, are you," he said.

Fuck it. Baby wire monkey needed a hug, baby wire monkey was going to _get_ a hug.

Dave wrapped his little bro up in his arms, pulled him in tight, rested Dirk's head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. He ran one hand up and down Dirk's skinny, knobby spine until his little bro relaxed a fraction of that shivery steel tension. "I wish I could, but trying to cheat the timeline never works out well. Paradoxes will eat the whole universe for breakfast if you give 'em half a chance, giant metaphorical monster teeth coming to chomp you right in half, mmmm, delicious, such a nutritious start to the morning. Which might be an ironic way to die -- rip up the timeline that lets either of us exist at all, close our eyes, and hope the power of love can paper over the plot holes -- but those kind of heroics never work out for me and I gotta say, I like you better alive."

"You can't take me back either, can you," Dirk said, his voice muffled against Dave's waistcoat and collar.

"I would if I could. In a heartbeat."

Dirk's arms crept up and tightened around Dave's waist. He breathed in, ragged and snotty and so obviously trying not to cry. Dave kept his mouth shut, just rubbed Dirk's back in silence and did his best to be solid and warm and just, you know, _there_. (See, Lalonde? He could so manage tact, when he needed to.)

Eventually Dirk pulled away, rubbed the back of his hand against his nose, and pulled a pair of obnoxious pointy triangle shades out of his sylladex. He settled them over his eyes and took a deep breath. "It's okay. I get it. A man has to do what has to be done," he said, trying for cool again.

He got a little closer this time. Not much, but hey, points for trying.

"Do you know how long you'll be here?" Dirk continued.

Dave shrugged. "Dunno. Jade's crackerjack at sweet-talking alien god tech shit, and Rose can probably see where I've gone, but I'm pretty sure the teleportalinator doohickey wasn't supposed to be able to zap me here so who knows how long it'll take to recreate the error in reverse. Probably not more than a couple days, though. The fishqueen will notice if I'm out of place much longer, and since that would fuck up the timeline and erase us all, we have to work on the assumption I'll be gone before I catch her attention."

"Oh. Right," Dirk said.

"Yeah," Dave agreed. Time travel and predestination sucked, but what could he do?

After a few seconds, Dirk rallied. "While you're here, do you want me to show you around? We could go fishing, or swim through the drowned city, or go flying on my rocketboard." He paused. "Or, if that gets boring, maybe you could help me with sparring? I've been watching your instruction videos and using the SkaiaNet footwork sensor, but it's not the same."

Dave thought about that too-large sword in a too-small hand and hid a wince. Yeah, all the kids needed to be ready for Sburb. Dirk and Roxy especially needed to be able to defend themselves against the Baroness's vicious whims. He wished like hell that wasn't true, wished like hell he could leave his little bro a safer world. But learning to fight, learning to make his body do what _he_ wanted so he wouldn't have to do what anyone _else_ wanted him to do... he remembered the first time he got all the way through a form and Sifu Jimenez nodded and told him yes, that's it, now do it that way again, a tiny smile on her wrinkled face. That was the best feeling.

He could do that for Dirk.

"Sure, no problem," he said. "But Houston gets hot as Satan's asscrack in the middle of the day and I don't think that's changed just because the place flooded. Let's save the workout for tonight and do something less sweaty for now."

"You want to go swimming, then?" Dirk said. He looked dubiously at Dave. "I don't think your clothes are the right kind of fabric, and none of mine are big enough for you to borrow." Because he was going to disappear into the Medium before he ever got his adult height and build, so why bother providing clothes that size?

Dave glanced down at his black jeans, his white button-up shirt, and his red crushed-velvet waistcoat. As a compromise between his habitual Hollywood eyes-on-me duds and the reality of hiking around Rose's private forest, excellent. As scuba gear, not so much. "Yeah, no, ixnay on the imming-sway, let's not and say we didn't. What about fishing? I distinctly remember you mentioning fishing as an option."

Dirk nodded. "Yes. If we catch anything, that can be dinner. Frozen pizza gets boring, so I taught myself to cook. Thanks for the spices, by the way."

"You're welcome." Dave hadn't been planning to leave any spices, but sure, he could do that. After he got Jade to tell him what the hell to buy. "So. Fishing. A time-honored relaxing summer pursuit. Do you have a boat or do we just lean out the window and--"

He stopped, hands braced on the windowsill. That was a _long_ way down. Which was good, technically speaking -- less chance of the apartment getting swamped by rogue waves -- but the vertiginous drop did make him wonder what exactly Jade had done to the foundations and skeleton of his building to keep it up when the entire rest of the city got undermined and drowned. And also what kind of black magic was involved in Dirk's fishing lines.

"You can't fish from the window. The water's too far away. We have to climb down," Dirk said, as if this should be obvious. "My spare fishing rod is broken, but I can work on fixing it while you use the good one. I already have bait in my sylladex."

Dirk walked across the apartment and grabbed a rod with a mangled metal spinny thing near the handle. After a moment it disappeared into his sylladex.

"You bring Cal," he said as he opened the door to the stairwell. "He gets sad if I leave him alone for too long."

Dave bit his tongue before he could say anything about puppets not being alive -- for which he was thankful both in general and in particular as applied to Dirk's orange-limbed bundle of evil and spite; that thing's eyes were just too damn creepy for words -- because given that puppets weren't alive and couldn't get lonely, Dirk had to be projecting. And if pretending the devil-dummy was alive helped him stay relatively sane, like fuck was Dave going to take that illusion away from him.

"Sure thing. Hey, does Cal know how to fish? 'Cause I have to confess, under strictest confidentiality, that fishing is not a skill I ever had a reason to master. Houston was a lot drier when I lived here and the closest I get to nature these days tends to be demo films people send me under the strange impression that I like to shower money on indie arthouse flicks. I know, I know, you're thinking Rose lives right on top of a waterfall and there ought to be fish downstream, but I think she's on a first-name basis with all of them and has turned them into squamous horrors of the deep that nobody in their right mind would want to touch with a ten foot pole anyway, let alone eat."

Dirk paused in the doorway, his expression unreadable now that his eyes were hidden behind his shades. He didn't seem to understand how to move the rest of his face, which was both sad and freaky.

"You don't know how to fish?" he asked.

Dave shook his head. "Nope."

"But the video files--" Dirk said. He cut himself off. "You should learn. The history files say the oceans start to rise before you die, and you shouldn't trust anything from supermarkets after the Condesce takes over. It's safer to catch your own food."

"Gotcha," Dave said. "I will remember not to take candy from strangers."

It was terrifying to hear an account of his failure to save the world from somebody living in the aftermath of the apocalypse. It wasn't like he'd ever distrusted Rose's visions, but foresight didn't have the same leaden ring of finality.

They had to lose. The universe depended on their loss. Dirk and Roxy's lives depended on their loss.

The enforced futility still gnawed in his heart like acid.

Dirk was studying him intently from behind his shades. "I could teach you to fish. If you wouldn't mind," he offered. "It could be payment for helping me with my sparring."

"You don't need to pay me back. I'd help you for nothing," Dave said. "But sure. Teach me the way of the fisherman, sensei. Fill my ignorance with knowledge." Since apparently he had to leave a video explaining fishing to Dirk, who was now going to explain fishing to him. Circular paradoxes gave him the worst headaches. That was undoubtedly why they seemed to make up ninety percent of his life.

"It's not very complicated. Mostly I just sit around and wait for the fish to bite."

"I can do waiting. Lounging around artfully doing nothing is my prime skill in this life," Dave said.

"Right. And the part where you help lead a resistance and rebellion against the Condesce is all lies and slander," Dirk said.

Ha. So the kid could do sarcasm after all. Good to know Dave had managed -- would manage? would have managed? tenses, what the fuck -- to pass that lesson on.

"Exactamundo. But enough chitchat. I believe I was promised some fresh sea air and a fishing lesson. Let's get on that, come on, chop chop."

Dirk stared at him silently for ten seconds that dragged out like hours. Then he darted across the room -- not quite fast enough to vanish en route, but a very credible flash step for his age -- and wrapped his arms around Dave's waist for a brief moment. The next second he was back in the doorway like nothing had happened.

"Okay. The first thing is to watch the waves so we don't cast off the wrong side of the building and get our lines tangled around the girders. We need to be able to see all around for that, so we need to go up to the roof. We can climb down from there." Dirk turned and started up the stairs, tiny skinny body swallowed up by shadows.

"Don't forget Cal!" he called over his shoulder.

Dave snagged the puppet of doom off the microwave and hurried to catch up to his little bro.

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, the stanza of "West-Running Brook" that I took the title line from is as follows:
>
>> "Speaking of contraries, see how the brook  
> In that white wave runs counter to itself.  
> It is from that in water we were from  
> Long, long before we were from any creature.  
> Here we, in our impatience of the steps,  
> Get back to the beginning of beginnings,  
> The stream of everything that runs away.  
> Some say existence like a Pirouot  
> And Pirouette, forever in one place,  
> Stands still and dances, but it runs away;  
> It seriously, sadly, runs away  
> To fill the abyss's void with emptiness.  
> It flows beside us in this water brook,  
> But it flows over us. It flows between us  
> To separate us for a panic moment.  
> It flows between us, over us, and with us.  
> And it is time, strength, tone, light, life, and love--  
> And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;  
> The universal cataract of death  
> That spends to nothingness--and unresisted,  
> Save by some strange resistance in itself,  
> Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,  
> As if regret were in it and were sacred.  
> It has this throwing backward on itself  
> So that the fall of most of it is always  
> Raising a little, sending up a little.  
> Our life runs down in sending up the clock.  
> The brook runs down in sending up our life.  
> The sun runs down in sending up the brook.  
> And there is something sending up the sun.  
> It is this backward motion toward the source,  
> Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,  
> The tribute of the current to the source.  
> It is from this in nature we are from.  
> It is most us."


End file.
